by Sarah Lynch, Special for USA TODAY

by Sarah Lynch, Special for USA TODAY

CAIRO -- Egyptians in Tahrir Square expressed anger Friday that an Islamist-dominated committee voted to approve a new Egyptian constitution they say is an unacceptable power-grab by President Mohammed Morsi.

"It doesn't represent all of the people in the country," said Yasser Waly, standing near a clump of plastic chairs sprawled across the square.

"It's a big joke," said Nesma El-Dorghamy, standing in the afternoon sun. "There was no representation of many different segments. There is only one segment ‚?? the Islamists."

Her son, Ahmed El-Dorghamy, criticized the hasty pace of the approval process, which was done before the country's Supreme Court planned to rule on the legitimacy of the committee.

"I think it's a disgrace ‚?? the speed at which they were passing it," he said. "It's offensive for anyone watching who has an education."

The vote by the constitutional committee could give Muslim clerics oversight over legislation and bring restrictions on freedom of speech, women's rights and other liberties, say opponents. The draft must be put to a nationwide referendum within 30 days.

Protesters said they would march Friday in opposition to the constitution and a decree Morsi issued recently that gives him sweeping powers, including immunity from having his decisions reviewed by the judiciary. The Muslim Brotherhood, backers of the Morsi presidency, said it would hold nationwide demonstrations in support of the decree on Saturday.

The proposed new constitution will be based on "principles" of Islamic law though what that will mean in practice is not yet known. Saleh said he is worried that Morsi, a longtime member of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, is taking Egypt toward a theocracy, "a state where religious leaders are given the upper hand in interpreting the law."

Anti-Morsi protesters were holding a sit-in in Tahrir Square and said they were planning another major protest Friday. Iman Bibars, chairperson of the Association for the Development and Enhancement of Women, warned of the consequences of the new document.

"It's going to screw us all, everybody ‚?? women, men, minorities, everyone, every idiot who thinks he will not be touched by this because he is not a woman or a Christian," Bibars said. "This is a constitution for the Muslim Brotherhood only."

"The constitutional committee does not represent the people," said Saleh.

Islamists won nearly 75% of parliamentary seats in elections held after the ouster of former dictator Hosni Mubark and have used that majority to marginalize other parties on the committee. Representatives of liberal parties walked out of the process because they said their input was being ignored.

"We see whatever is going on at the moment is leading toward a dictatorship, said Ihab Naguib, a manager in the information technology sector, sitting with his mother in the square.

"We are not accepting the decrees passed as well as what has been done to the constitution ‚?? the half-baked constitution. It's all under the general trend of dictatorship that we're getting back into," he said.

The final draft of the constitution provides for some economic rights as well as basic protections against arbitrary detention and torture, but it fails to protect freedom of religion and expression and put an end to military trials for civilians, Human Rights said in a Friday report.

"The decision of constituent assembly leaders to move a flawed and contradictory draft to a vote is not the right way to guarantee fundamental rights or to promote respect for the rule of law," said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch, in the report. "Rushing through a draft while serious concerns about key rights protections remain unaddressed will create huge problems down the road that won't be easy to fix."

Regarding the status of women, the draft constitution says the state shall provide free motherhood and child services, but it no longer specifies "sex" as grounds for forbidding discrimination.

"The state's role should be confined to ensuring equality and non-discrimination, without interfering with a woman's choices about her life, family, and profession or to justify discrimination on that basis," the Human Rights Watch report said.

The passage of the constitution heads off a possible ruling on Sunday by the Supreme Constitutional Court to dissolve the constitutional assembly as illegitimate.

Meanwhile, judges with the high and lower courts of appeal have refused to go to work for two days to protest the Morsi decree. A statement by the judges of the high appeals court, known as the Court of Cassation, described Morsi's decrees as an "unprecedented" assault on the judiciary and its principles that "defies belief."

"The Brotherhood wants a referendum as soon as possible because they feel that a referendum will cool the opposition, and they'll be able to claim another democratic mandate," said Shadi Hamid, director of research for the Brookings Doha Center, in Qatar. "Also, they're still worried about challenges to the constituent assembly."

A Supreme Court decision Sunday on the constitutional assembly will have no effect technically because Morsi's decree made all of his decisions immune from judicial review. But a ruling to dissolve the assembly can raise doubts among Egyptians about the legitimacy of the constitution, said Shadi Hamid, director of research at Brookings Doha Center in Qatar, a think tank.

"Sunday is still being treated as a deadline," Hamid said.

The final draft constitution was released to the public for the first time Thursday, appearing online, after various versions of drafts over the past several months have become available. Article 2 bases legislation on the "principles" of Islamic law ‚?? the same as Egypt's 1971 constitution. The assembly approved the article Thursday and was scheduled to vote on the others.

Mohamed El Mekkawi, a member of the foreign relations department in the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party, the party of Morsi, said the decree is about preventing the allies of Mubarak from hanging on to power.

"We are in a transition period and in this transition period there are a lot of problems concerning a lot of people, points of views‚?¶ so this influences how people will react," he said. "It's about the old regime wanting to return again and say 'Morsi cannot be president anymore.'"

Some of Morsi's supporters say the president had to issue the decree to prevent the courts from trying to dissolve the nation's Islamist-dominated constituent assembly. The courts dissolved the first constituent assembly and the Islamist-dominated parliament in June based on legal arguments. Morsi's new decree guarantees the assembly will stay in place.

Egyptian blogger Ghaly Shafik said the courts suspended their work because judges believe their interests are threatened. It doesn't mean the opposition forces and the judges are united, he said.

The judges, "said nothing during Mubarak's dictatorship, so why should I side with them now? They didn't turn into angels overnight, so I don't care about what they do," he said. "The only people who I trust are the people who took to the streets yesterday."